GULF OIL DISASTER

A flower shop in Florida that saw a drop-off in weddings this summer is probably out of luck. So is a restaurant in Idaho that had to switch seafood suppliers. A hardware store on the Mississippi coast may be left out, too.

The latest guidelines for BP's $20 billion victims compensation fund say the nearer you are geographically to the oil spill and the more closely you depend on the Gulf of Mexico's natural resources, the better chance you have of getting a share of the money.

Testing the Water is a grassroots movement of concerned citizens is dedicated to ascertaining the true magnitude of health risks associated with exposure to oil and chemical dispersants in the Gulf waters through independent laboratory testing. Our citizen's coalition supports the advocation of the Precautionary Principle when it comes to Environmental Protection & Safety.

The actual existence of the plume was in some doubt until a team of researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution provided incontrovertible proof. The researchers managed to catch up with the plume about three miles southwest of the original blowout location, then used a remote-controlled submarine and an underwater spectrometer to figure out its dimensions. They were able to study the plume for ten days in June before Hurricane Alex forced them from the area. It's still not known whether this was the only plume or whether others formed, and the team said at a press conference today that they would be unwilling to commit themselves either way on that point.

Scientists have detected an underwater plume of oil the size of Manhattan, according to the Wall Street Journal. The findings, published yesterday, further undermine the Obama administration’s optimistic view that most of the Deepwater Horizon oil has already disappeared.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Optimistic view?" It was a flat out @#%ing LIE for the sake of the November elections! Look at this story. Obama has declared the crisis fixed by fiat! Nothing more to see here, people; move along and don't forget to vote Democratic in November!" -- Official White Horse Souse

Many scientists had predicted that oil-eating bacteria—already common in the Gulf due to natural oil seeps—would process much of the crude leaked from BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead, which was capped July 15. (Read more about how nature is fighting the oil spill.)

But new evidence shows that a 22-mile-long (35-kilometer-long), 650-foot-high (200-meter-high) pocket of oil has persisted for months at depths of 3,600 feet (1,100 meters), according to a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts.

Weeks after the U.S. government claimed that the "vast majority" of oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has been taken care of, oil has possibly been found deep on the Gulf seafloor, scientists announced this week.

The latest estimate, writes Randy Rieland at environmental hub Grist, is that "only 10 percent of the oil that gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon well was 'actually removed from the ocean.'" That's one of the more "pessimistic" estimates thus far, and comes from an oceanographer at Florida State University. It's also "wildly at odds with what the feds have been saying--that as much as 75 of the oil is gone."

Earlier this week Commerce Secretary Gary Locke descended on Louisiana to announce a $30.7 million grant for a coastal restoration project near Port Fourchon. He called the funding a sign of the “administration’s commitment to help the Gulf Coast’s economy and environment recover in the wake of the BP oil spill.”

There was just one problem — funding for the project was approved months before the oil spill. And according to the state agency in charge of coastal restoration, there was no action even necessary by the Department of Commerce for the project to progress.

BP’s attempts to spin the disaster into an art form through the mass media and paid advertisement are all part of BP’s Charade. The failing Static Kill on the “wrongly” capped well (Macondo A) is just one of the “broken steps”. The return of BP Zombie Well by Fintan Dunne aptly described the multiple failures in trying to kill the wild well. Is there more to it? Did BP drill one or two wells? Apparently the wells were drilled outside their approved period of exploration. Despite what it seems Well B was not drilled at its proposed location. Instead after plugging well A, DWH drilled on an unreported location which blew on 20th April 2010. Were regulations contravened?

The company that owned the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico is accusing BP of withholding critical evidence needed to investigate the cause of the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to a confidential document obtained by The Associated Press. BP called the claims a publicity stunt.

The new complaint by Transocean follows similar complaints by U.S. lawmakers about difficulties obtaining necessary information from BP in their investigations.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said they detected a plume of hydrocarbons in June that was at least 22 miles long and more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a residue of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

According to the institution, the 1.2-mile-wide, 650-foot-high plume of trapped hydrocarbons provides at least a partial answer to recent questions asking where all the oil has gone as surface slicks shrink and disappear.

A 22-mile-long invisible mist of oil is meandering far below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, where it will probably loiter for months or more, scientists reported Thursday in the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill.

The most worrisome part is the slow pace at which the oil is breaking down in the cold, 40-degree water, making it a long-lasting but unseen threat to vulnerable marine life, experts said.

Earlier this month, top federal officials declared the oil in the spill was mostly "gone," and it is gone in the sense you can't see it. But the chemical ingredients of the oil persist more than a half-mile beneath the surface, researchers found.

In a sternly worded letter to BP's attorneys, Transocean said the oil giant has in its sole possession information key to identifying the cause "of the tragic loss of eleven lives and the pollution in the Gulf of Mexico," and that the company's refusal to turn over the documents has hampered Transocean's investigation and hindered what it has been able to tell families of the deceased and state and federal investigators about the accident.

[F]ollowing an unexplained fish kill in St. Joseph’s Bay… Officials called the emergency meeting at the park to address concerns about rumors of large oil sheens sighted off St Joseph’s Bay, and whether there was any correlation with a fish kill in the same vicinity.

[D]ead fish and crabs began washing up along the shoreline by the hundreds. In addition, anonymous reports started coming in of a brown sludgy material sighted six miles offshore [Feds now say seaweed]…

As with all modern disasters, getting to the truth is not an easy task. First, people along the Gulf Coast were told that BP and the EPA had placed benzene monitors along the Alabama and Florida coasts, and that there was no indication of any VOCs. A senior reporter from WEAR-TV, an ABC affiliate in Pensacola, was unable to find any air-quality monitors in that area.

Several studies have found there is no threshold for carcinogenesis — that is, a level of benzene exposure at which lower levels are nontoxic. It appears that benzene is toxic at all levels and with chronic exposure — especially in people with certain genetic weaknesses — cancer is likely to develop.

Symptoms from VOCs are many times mistaken for other forms of illnesses, but generally they include headaches, dizziness, nausea, eye irritation, coughing, shortness of breath, nasal irritation, and multiple chemical sensitivity. Some of the gases have an odor, but others are odorless.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico poses direct threats to human health from inhalation or dermal contact with the oil and dispersant chemicals, and indirect threats to seafood safety and mental health. Physicians should be familiar with health effects from oil spills to appropriately advise, diagnose, and treat patients who live and work along the Gulf Coast or wherever a major oil spill occurs.

We’re trying to do two things while the evaluation of alternatives is going on. We have the opportunity to develop more vital signs for the well, one of them being to remove all foreign objects — all foreign liquids from the current well, flush it, and fill it with seawater, so we have exactly the same density of material inside and outside the BOP that will allow us to do an ambient pressure test to see if there’s any kind of pressure, a rise or fall related to something other than what we believe now to be the gas bubbles that are escaping and causing the drop in pressure.

We know that the pipe and well casing for well "B" was destroyed in at least one location about 1000 feet below the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. This was the reasn for the failure of the first "Top Kill" procedure.

CNN reported on two other potential leaks at 9,000 feet and 17,000 feet.

Therefore, it made no sense to try to cap the well July 15th, much less to claim a success, unless BP pulled a fast one and switched the ROV camera back to the abandoned Well "A", and capped that for the benefit of the TV audience. This ia borne out by the navigation data for the ROVs which show the ROV camera showing the cap located well away from the blown out Deepwater Hporizon well "B", at the location for well "A".

Click for larger imageSo, what I think happened is that under the cover of Tropical Depression Bonnie, the ROV and some ships were moved over from Well "B" to well "A", which they figured could be easily capped for the V audience. But remember, well "A" was abandoned after it ran into trouble, so I think the pipe and casing for well "A" is also damaged, and BP wasn't prepared to deal with both well being blown out below the surface.

[There] is concern about how poisonous dispersants are… “What’s really important is oil mixed with dispersants is more toxic than just oil alone… and now we have dispersants on an unprecedented scale put into the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico,” [Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council executive director Mark] Swanson said…”

SPIKE LEE: You see these commercials, these PSA commercials, they run day and night. They say, like — well, we’ll decide if you have a legitimate claim. That’s like the — the insurance companies deciding down here. Very few people got their money. So, for me, Keith, what — the threat between the first documentary when the levees broke and this one, “If God is Willing, Da Creek Don’t Rise” is greed — is all about greed. And I really think that this is going to bring about the downfall of the United States of America because we have people in office appointed and voted in and people in big business positions who only care about the dollar bill and there are people get harmed, people die. They say that’s the cost of doing business. …

This is absolutely disgusting. These fisherman have had their lives destroyed and when they finally had a platform to voice their concerns, they were not only mocked but actually BLAMED for destroying the fishing industry. Who do the representatives at the town think they are kidding? The use of toxic dispersant in the Gulf has poisoned the fish, and wrecked havoc on the fishing industry. Speaking out against this is not only important, it is the RIGHT thing to do whether it hurts your industry our not.

Far from being gone, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster appears to still be causing ecological damage in the Gulf of Mexico, according to new findings from University of South Florida scientists.

And scientists from the University of Georgia said the amount of oil that remains in the water could be 70 to 79 percent of the more than 4 million barrels of oil that escaped into the gulf.

[P]olycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)… include mutagens and probable carcinogens… these chemicals accumulate for years in invertebrates. The Gulf provides about two-thirds of the oysters in the United States and is a major fishery for shrimp and crab.

The US Government lied to you. The US Government is willing to let you and your children eat poisoned food for the sake of upcoming elections and BP's profitability! What does it take to get you angry?

Two new scientific reports Tuesday raised fresh fears about the environmental fallout from the world's worst offshore oil spill and questioned government assurances that most of the oil from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico was already gone.

Nearly 80 per cent of the oil spilled from a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico is still in the gulf, US scientists have estimated, challenging a more optimistic assessment by the US government earlier in the month.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Now the whole world knows the US Government is lying about the Gulf Oil Disaster the same way the USSR lied about Chernobyl!

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill still poses threats to human health and seafood safety, according to a study published Monday by the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association.

The report comes two days after President Obama and members of his family swam in the Gulf at Panama City Beach and ate fish caught there, and hours after this year's commercial shrimping season officially kicked off along the Louisiana coast.

Federal officials disputed the new report and said ongoing testing is aggressive and sufficient to protect public health.

Webmaster's Commentary:

First off, it is already news around the world that Obama;s swim did not take place in the gulf itself, but at a private beach (possibly even a pool) inside a sheltered bay. Based on that deception, one should not accept the origins of the fish taco at face value, and even if they found a few safe fish for the President to eat, that does not prove the toxicity or lack of same for fish elsewhere in the Gulf. It's pure PR and as I noted further down, Obama is apparently willing to let Americans eat poisoned food for the sake of a few more votes in November.

Scientists have found evidence that oil has become toxic to marine organisms in a section of the Gulf of Mexico that supports the spawning grounds of commercially important fish species.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Obama lied when he declared the Gulf "Open for Business". He staged a fake swim photo=op, not actually in the Gulf, to sell everyone on the idea that the gulf waters are safe to swim in and the food is safe to eat. He did that, not for the benefit of the people of the Gulf, but to help his huge campaign donor BP and to try to make the issue vanish from the public awareness in time for the November Elections.

In other words, Obama has no problems letting you eat poisoned food for the sake of a few more votes!

Most of this file is technical crap that doesn't make sense to us regular people, but look at the very first page. BP filed with the government to call the relief wells "C" and "D." If there never were a Well B why would the two relief wells hop a letter to become C and D? One more piece of circumstantial evidence.

"We've got shrimpers out there saying there is oil out there," Miller said. "We had a meeting Wednesday night where we had over 150 shrimpers... who are saying there is oil out there and these underwater plumes are varying in size and shape. This stuff is obviously moving around out there."

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Real patriots will eat those shrimp! Real Americans LOVE the taste of petroleum in their food!" -- Official White Horse Souse

Reporting his findings to his supervisor, a private consulting company hired by BP, the reply, according to his logbook came back: "Told—no reporting of oil or tar balls anymore. Don't put on report. We're here for boom removal only," referring to the miles of yellow and orange containment barriers placed throughout the Gulf.

A group of scientists says as much as 79 percent of BP Plc’s leaked oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico, challenging an Obama administration assessment that the crude is largely gone or rapidly disappearing.

Most of the oil that leaked from BP’s Macondo well from April 20 to July 15 is still beneath the water’s surface, five scientists including Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens, concluded in a memo made public yesterday. The researchers say they drew upon the U.S. government’s study while reaching different conclusions.

“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” he said in a statement released yesterday. “The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”

From pollution to politics, the era of deception and duplicity has reached new heights and hijacked almost every form of media in the world. In the last frontiers for truth such as the internet, disinformation operations are in full swing to discredit and destroy any semblance of authentic and factual information available to the public.

How many more lies will people around the world accept as truth? Some say a global awakening is taking place, but at what cost? Will it take the destruction of most of the earth and its resources before people are enlightened?

The escalating media and political reports are so far fetched, cunning, and so beyond reality, it's as if each is trying to top the other with one sinister plot after the next. To demonstrate the outright lies by national governments and the media, let's take three examples from the last year alone, including the H1N1 scandal, airport body scanners and the BP oil disaster.

By crafting this illusion of safe beaches, safe food, safe air, the President, BP, the Coast Guard and all the other prostituted government agencies are going to sucker God knows how many unknowing American men, women and children into poisoning, sickening or perhaps even killing themselves through cancers or organ failure by swimming, eating and breathing toxins that the former are callously trying to cover up for various underhanded motives. This is yet another stab in the back by Orwellian Obama and his gang of coverup artists, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us, while a criminal corporation, you know who, clearly the Alpha Dog here, calls the main shots. Obama has reaally deepened his bad Karma here, tooling his own daughter in an attempt to get other parents to expose their daughters to the lurking hazards in the Gulf. Et tu, Obami?

The oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is still in the Gulf of Mexico and is causing ecological damage, according to new findings from the University of South Florida.

USF marine scientists conducting experiments in an area where they previously found clouds of oil have now discovered what appears to be oil in sediment of a vital underwater canyon and evidence that the oil has become toxic to critical marine organisms, the college reported Tuesday.

CNN has another article on the report by University of South Florida researchers, “Initial findings from a new survey of the Gulf conclude that dispersants may [may?? see following sentence] have sent the oil to the ocean floor, where it has turned up at the bottom of [Desoto] canyon within 40 miles of the Florida Panhandle.”

“The dispersant is moving the oil down out of the surface and into the deeper waters” a marine microbiologist at USF told CNN.

David Hollander, a chemical oceanographer at USF, talked to CNN about shining ultraviolet lights on the ocean floor, “All of a sudden, it turns out to be a constellation of little dots.”

Contrary to what the media is telling you, a report from the Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia released yesterday says that a whopping 79% of the oil from the Gulf oil spill still remains in the waters there. The report concludes that the media is way off in their estimates — they are saying that a mere 25% of the oil remains..

There is a typo on page 10 of the MMS PDF regarding the Y coordinate for well B. The Y coordinate is correctly printed on page 3 and page 11. You will see that the dyslexic person who typed out the report switched a '1' and a '4' on page 10. Please be aware of this because otherwise it will lead to a lot of confusion!!)

No oil has leaked from the broken Gulf well since July, and the federal government is reopening some waters for fishing. But some fishermen are split over whether to start trawling the waters again when there may be a risk of seafood being contaminated with oil and dispersants.

As for Obama's swim, on August 16, the London Independent reported that Obama and his daughter, Sasha, swam in a private Panama City Beach, FL beach off Alligator Point in St. Andrew Bay, not part of the Gulf.

Reporters were banned, no TV video permitted. "So....only the White House photographer was allowed to capture proceedings. The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal."

Pensacola News Journal reports in "Military Notes" that employees of Eglin Air Force Base are digging up sea turtle eggs. Contrary to most news reports claiming that there is no oil and Gulf waters are safe for swimming and to eat the Gulf seafood, the remarkable turtle initiative is "to protect the hatchlings from toxic oil remaining in the Gulf." (See link below) This is more consideration than given to Gulf Coast pregnant women's unborn or children, the most susceptible to the toxins.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is hoarding vast amounts of raw data that independent marine researchers say could help both the public and scientists better understand the extent of the damage being caused by the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In most cases, NOAA insists on putting the data through a ponderous, many-weeks-long vetting process before making it public.

In other cases, NOAA actually intended to keep the data secret indefinitely. But officials told the Huffington Post on Tuesday that they have now decided to release it -- though when remains unclear.

BP, incidentally, gets to see all this data right away.

Webmaster's Commentary:

NOAA, it needs to be remembered, is already mired in a Climategate scandal in which at least 5 satellites intended to prove global warming have been revealed as over-stating measured temperatures by as much as 10-15 degrees F.

Researchers at the University of Georgia said Monday that more than three-quarters of the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon drilling-rig explosion could still be in the Gulf threatening fisheries and marine life, disputing government statements that much of the oil had been safely dispersed.

The major media outlets are reporting today that a group University of Georgia scientists, which includes Dr. Samantha Joye, says around 3/4 of BP’s oil is still in the Gulf of Mexico. Five days ago we reported on similar findings by a Florida university, “150 million gallons remain”; USF professor says 75 percent of oil has yet to be found. Thankfully, today’s news appears it will have a greater impact.

The Associated Press reports, “Five Georgia scientists who reviewed the data said Monday that instead of only 26 percent of the oil remaining, as a federal report said earlier this month, it’s actually closer to 80 percent.”

CNN reports, “Researchers at the University of South Florida have concluded that oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill may have settled to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico further east than previously suspected — and at levels toxic to marine life… Plankton and other organisms at the base of the food chain showed a ‘strong toxic response‘ to the crude.”

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill may have settled to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico further east than previously suspected and at levels toxic to marine life, researchers reported Monday.

Initial findings from a new survey of the Gulf conclude that dispersants may have sent the oil to the ocean floor, where it has turned up at the bottom of an undersea canyon within 40 miles of the Florida Panhandle. Plankton and other organisms showed a "strong toxic response" to the crude, according to researchers from the University of South Florida.

Mark Stewart, a third generation fisherman from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and BP vessel of opportunity worker, reports “purple looking jelly stuff, three feet thick, floating all over, as wide as a football field and tar balls as big as a car.”

Some U.S. Gulf Coast fishermen say they have caught crabs with black-stained gills and others report seeing fish and marine life gathering strangely on the sea surface following the massive BP Plc oil spill.

They fear these abnormalities could point to a lasting and potentially devastating impact on their fishing grounds and livelihoods from the world's worst offshore oil accident, and they say BP and the government may be downplaying the issue.

Two days after Walker's announcement and in response to claims from state and federal officials that Gulf Coast waters are safe and clean, fishermen took their own samples from the waters off of Pass Christian in Mississippi.

The samples were taken in water that is now open for shrimping, as well as from waters directly over Mississippi's oyster bed, that will likely open in September for fishing.

Commercial fisherman James "Catfish" Miller, took fishermen Danny Ross Jr. and Mark Stewart, along with scientist Dr. Ed Cake of Gulf Environmental Associates and others out and they found the fishing grounds to be contaminated with oil and dispersants.

“Fishermen do not want to lose our credibility or deliver contaminated seafood to market and make people sick.” – Kathy Birren

“While President Obama and state officials claim that the Gulf is ‘open for business,’ these fishermen say the spraying of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico is ongoing and they’re concerned that seafood pulled from impacted waters is unsafe for eating.”

"We've got shrimpers out there saying there is oil out there," Miller said. "We had a meeting Wednesday night where we had over 150 shrimpers... who are saying there is oil out there and these underwater plumes are varying in size and shape. This stuff is obviously moving around out there."

[William Walker, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources] "If you are not going to validate what you are saying through accepted scientific protocol and approaches, then quit talking about it without any evidence what you are saying is true," Walker said.

In other words, shut up.

Webmaster's Commentary:

In other words, reality is what the bought-and-paid-for scientists say it is!

The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal. Yet it soon emerged that the private beach on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, north-west Florida, isn't technically in the gulf.

The New York Times and Catskill Mountainkeeper have reported that the EPA’s last hearing on fracking, held in Canonsburg, Pa., in July drew over 1,200 people without a hitch. Unfortunately, the follow-up, all-day hearing that had been scheduled for last Thursday at the Oncenter Complex Convention Center in Syracuse, NY, was cancelled last Tuesday.

This was after Onondaga Country officials expressed “concern” that they were not given enough time to ready security in anticipation of “rallies” and “protests” at the event.

When people say that we understand the unbelievably complex climate system well enough to project scenarios out a hundred years, I point out that new things are being discovered every week. The latest scientific finding is that plankton cause hurricanes. I know it sounds like a headline in The Onion, but there it is.

The FDA and NOAA say that Gulf seafood is fine. President Obama ate a fish taco yesterday made with Gulf fish.

So does that mean Gulf seafood is safe to eat?

I had hoped - for the safe of the Gulf fishermen and the entire Gulf economy - that the answer was yes. But after digging a bit, I'm not so sure.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Remember, when Obama went to the G20, the USSS took along all the food and water the President and his family would consume during the three day trip. They took along the White House cooking staff. Does anyone think they were not as careful with the fish taco?

The White house releases a photo. From the photo one cannot tell where Obama and daughter are actually swimming. There just together in some water, somewhere. But is it Gulf water? You know; water that is contaminated.

Strangely enough all the accompanying photographs or video scenes were taken at Alligator Point, Florida.

President Obama won't take shirt off in front of cameras to swim in oil-ravaged Gulf waters
BY James Fanelli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, August 14th 2010, 2:51 PM
The leader of the free world's eye-candy abs are off limits to the public. President Obama vowed to take a swim in the oil-soaked Gulf on Sunday but out of sight from the press and shutterbugs....After press members said pictures of him swimming would be a good thing, a smiling Michelle Obama interjected by saying, "No, it's not."

BP has even gone as far as DENY tests that show that oil IS surfacing near Orange Beach. This company is actively involved in one of the greatest cover ups of our time. The situation defies logic, people are clearing filming oil, yet BP, playing the part of god, has publicly stated that the disaster is reaching its end.

“BP keeps telling us there is no oil, to skim or otherwise, and we keep telling them there is,” said Orange Beach Coastal Resource Manager Phillip West. “We’re skimming it.” Press – Register

The extent of the cover up is hard to imagine. The culprits include the White House, BP management and of course the infamous Admiral, Thad Allen. Stephen Lendman, reporting for Rense.com, had this to say in regards to the cover up and the censorship of free speech.

Tying the disaster fund directly to Gulf oil revenue has obvious political advantages for the company, as the Journal pointed out, "because it could make the administration and BP partners of sorts in developing the Gulf." It would forestall measures such as the bill passed by the House of Representatives last month effectively banning BP from new offshore drilling in the Gulf, because such a move would then threaten the stream of revenue for the disaster fund.

The White House never considered commandeering the assets of the corporate criminal, instead allowing BP to retain control of the disaster site through a series of failed attempts to shut down the oil leak. It has persistently downplayed the possibility of prosecution of any executives from BP or its partners in the well.

Webmaster's Commentary:

All of this is pretty predictable, in light of the fact that BP was one of the most significant contributors to Obama's presidential campaign!

Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia… is puzzled why NOAA won’t begin checking for submerged methane gases in the deep waters of the Gulf… “It seems crazy,” she said. “There is no reasonable explanation as to why it’s not being done. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Sure it makes sense. If there is massive amounts of dissolved methane (and there really has to be, when you think about it) and that Methane is what is killing all the sea life along the eastern seaboard (which it is known to do), then this would be an election killer for the incumbents. So of course NOAA (already scandalized by using flawed satellite data to bolster the case for a carbon tax on us all) is not going to carry out investigations which will produce results nobody wants before November!

Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, had a similar experience when she started talking about what she and others had discovered underwater.

"We felt like our wrists were slapped a little bit when we came forward and talked about the plumes,'' Joye said. "NOAA wanted a vetted, concrete story. We felt we had a concrete story. The plumes were real; the data was very solid.''

WLOX reports after “hundreds of tar balls and patties washed up on the beach near Lakeshore Road” Thursday night, the Hancock County, Mississippi Emergency Operations Center Director said, “If you walk along the pier, you’ll see small dead fish. You’ve got some speckled trout that’s dead through here. All the crabs are crawling up on the bank and I just kind of wonder why.”

He isn’t the only one wondering about this “unusual occurrence.” “Something is killing them. It wasn’t killing them before this oil got here. And now they’re dying everywhere,” a fisherman who didn’t want to be identified told WLOX.

“BP keeps telling us there is no oil, to skim or otherwise, and we keep telling them there is… We’re skimming it,” the Orange Beach Coastal Resource Manager said.

A BP spokesman told the Press-Register that company officials “don’t believe what the mayor’s crew is finding is oil.”

“City officials said samples collected last week from local waters tested positive for the presence of hydrocarbons, but BP rejected those findings… An invitation to jointly collect samples on Thursday was turned down by a local BP official,” the article reports.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"We don't see it and we don't smell it, and you can't make us, nyah, hyah, nyah!" -- Official White Horse Souse

In actuality, this “static kill” did nothing that BP and Allen said it would do. Certainly the well is not dead or “static”… The fact that they’re getting pressure now tells me that they are indeed communicated to the reservoir below…

Webmaster's Commentary:

In other words, this is just more "make believe the problem is fixed for the elections" propaganda.

Media coverage of the oil spill’s effect on the Gulf focusing on tourist income lost by the waterfront towns – with footage of empty beaches, restaurants and T-shirt shops – dominates the news. Interviews with devastated business owners are heart rending. But they always end with references to somehow hanging on until “things get back to normal.”

Trouble is, things are not going to “normalize.” Not for the Panhandle of Florida, and probably not for the rest of the state, either.

Projections suggest that Florida can expect oil all along its west coast, and possibly throughout the Keys and up the east coast as well. Yet even before BP’s well began spewing crude, pressures within the state’s economy were building. It was an explosive situation awaiting a match.

Of course, separate and apart from its oxygen-depleting properties, Corexit is itself toxic to fish. Given that even seagulls won't touch the fish that are washing up today, the fish should be tested for Corexit poisoning.

BP and Corexit manufacturer Nalco claim the chemical reduced damage from the spill, and was as harmless as dish soap.

But dispersants do not lessen the amount of oil in the environment. Rather, they break oil into tiny drops that have different, but not necessarily fewer, toxic properties. After more than three months, the fundamental question lingers: Did Corexit do more harm than good?

I'm beginning to wonder whether BP keeps on doing one confusing procedure after another, and keeps on saying that the well has been capped, hoping that everyone stops paying attention so that BP can just pack up its bags and slink away while people aren't paying attention.

Relief wells are the best hope for permanently capping the well. But it is possible that BP has messed up the well so badly that the relief wells will fail.

As Cavnar notes, BP has already taken down or blurred most of its underwater camera feeds. BP might just declare "mission accomplished" and skip the relief wells, leaving a ticking time bomb which will pollute the Gulf for years to come.

When reached for comment, Lt. Cmdr. Dale Vogelsang, liaison officer with the United State Coast Guard, told The Log he had contacted Unified Command and they had “confirmed” that dispersants were not being used in Florida waters.

“Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in Louisiana,” Vogelsang said.

All was right with the world. Except, it wasn't. Day before yesterday, Adm. Allen announced they were going to start a "pressure test", babbling about the annulus and raising the ominous spectre that they are still actually communicated to the reservoir. Wells confirmed that fear in the afternoon, admitting that they indeed had 4,200 psi on the well when it's supposed to be dead. At the seafloor, the well should have no more than 2,200 psi on it, and conceivable less, if the hydrostatic of the mud in the closed well had overcome reservoir pressure. Then it got really confusing. Wells said that it wouldn't hold 4,200 psi because of "bubbles" leaking out of the wellhead, implying that they are pumping on it to keep it there, but that they're going to "test" it by relieving pressure. ??

Evidence is starting to surface that BP has pulled a fast one and has changed the well being shown on TV.

According to documents filed by British Petroleum with the US Minerals Management Service, there are two wells in the area of the spill. The first well, Well "A", was drilled early this year, ran into troubles, and was abandoned. Then Well B was drilled, which resulted in the explosion which destroyed the Deepwater Horizon.

Hooper-Bui’s depictions of samples confiscated by US Fish and Wildlife officials and expeditions blocked by local law enforcement is consistent with the steady stream of reports about obstruction, censorship, and confusion under BP’s private army of contractors. A full and open scientific assessment of the effects of the BP disaster is crucial for the health of the ecosystem and the residents of this American jewel.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So even though the official story is that the crisis is over, the US Government and BP are still preventing access to the area by scientists unless they sign a confidentiality agreement that they will not share what they find with the public!

Linda Hooper-Bui, Louisiana State University Department of Entomology Associate Professor, writes in The Scientist, “My PhD student’s ant samples were taken away by a US Fish and Wildlife officer at a publicly accessible state Wildlife Management Area because our project hadn’t been approved by Incident Command.”

What is the Incident Command? Hooper-Bui continues, “[It's] also called the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command — which is a joint program of BP and federal agencies, such as the Coast Guard…”

The deal with the White House would allow BP to guarantee its $20bn (£13bn) clean-up fund against revenues from its operations in the Gulf, which account for approximately 10pc of its oil and gas business.

If the deal were to be agreed – it remains one of a number of solutions being discussed – it would all but guarantee BP’s future in the Gulf, despite efforts by certain members of the US Congress to force the company away from US shores.

P has managed to link the fate of its $20 billion oil spill victims compensation fund with its continued ability to pump oil from the Gulf of Mexico. The voluntary trust agreement negotiated with the Department of Justice is not with the British-based multinational, or even with BP America, but with a fairly remote subsidiary, BP Exploration & Production Inc. (BPEC) -- a Delaware corporation that operates BP's Gulf oil leases.

So if BP's drilling revenues from the Gulf suddenly vanished, so, presumably, would the compensation fund, said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program.

Did you know that the United States does NOT have any big oil companies. It's true: the largest American oil company, Exxon Mobil, is only the 14th largest in the world, and is dwarfed by the really big oil companies -- all owned by foreign governments or government- sponsored monopolies -- that dominate the world's oil supply.

Webmaster's Commentary:

William Phillips, a lobbyist and former staffer to Senator Ted Stevens, died with Stevens in the recent Alaska plane crash.

According to the ER nurses, in the southern Mississippi and Louisiana areas there have been more than 600 cases of what their staffs have appropriately named the "BP flu". The vast majority of these "flu" cases are with those people who are working along the coast, as well as further offshore, on boats; and those who live along the southernmost areas along the Gulf of Mexico. One might initially think - based on mainstream media reports - that these flu-like symptoms are nothing to be overly concerned about. This is not a matter of 'take two aspirins and call me in the morning'. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Commercial Fishing communities in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida have united to demand that local, state, and federal agencies force BP to discontinue the use of toxic dispersants and conduct better testing before reopening fishing waters.

"We need to get our government to get a handle on this situation and shut down our fishing waters until they test for dispersants, and get the use of dispersants stopped unless they can prove to us they are not harmful," Kathy Birren, a spokesperson for commercial fishermen in Florida, told Truthout, "We are seeing fish kills. They [US Government and BP] are covering this all up."

According to the ER nurses, in the southern Mississippi and Louisiana areas there have been more than 600 cases of what their staffs have appropriately named the "BP flu". The vast majority of these "flu" cases are with those people who are working along the coast, as well as further offshore, on boats; and those who live along the southernmost areas along the Gulf of Mexico. One might initially think - based on mainstream media reports - that these flu-like symptoms are nothing to be overly concerned about. This is not a matter of 'take two aspirins and call me in the morning'. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Key evidence on one of the world's worst oil spills could soon be in the hands of the leading suspects as BP and partner contractors are set to start salvaging the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

The US government is leading what could become a criminal investigation into the disaster. But it does not have the technical expertise to gather evidence some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Transocean, which leased the rig to BP, is expected to take charge of the salvage operations.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This is absolutely unbelievable.

There are capable companies internationally with the expertise to make this happen in an honest and responsible way; why are they not being called upon here?!?

What is it that they, and the American public, are not supposed to see?!?

The Gulf of Mexico disaster has changed U.S. priorities, costs, and energy supply sources for years to come. But the fact that the U.S. needs energy isn’t changing anytime soon, and as mass sources of green energy are still a while away, the most likely alternative might be the most surprising one.

With US$15 billion invested annually in offshore drilling in the United States, the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico means that this money is getting ready to migrate elsewhere. And it is the Athabasca oil sands of Alberta, Canada, that are number one on the list.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Even When It's Not Out of Sight)
Monday 09 August 2010
by: Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld
To the representatives’ request to have someone explain to him why BP would not want to clean up the oil, Blanchard angrily obliged:“Because it’s more cost effective for ya’ll to come at night and sink the son-of-a-bitch! When the oil’s coming around, they call ya’ll, they tell ya’ll where the oil’s at, and the first thing ya’ll do is tell them to go the other way, ya’ll send the planes, and ya’ll fucking sink it! [Spray dispersants from the air]...Ya’ll are putting the oil on the bottom of my fishing grounds! Ya’ll not only messing me up now, ya’ll are messing me up for the rest of my life! I ain’t gonna live long enough to buy anymore shrimp!”

"I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil," USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF's public announcement, he said, comparing it to being "beat up" by federal officials.

The USF scientists weren't alone. Vernon Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, was part of a similar effort that met with a similar reaction. "We expected that NOAA would be pleased because we found something very, very interesting," Asper said. "NOAA instead responded by trying to discredit us. It was just a shock to us."

Drilling on a relief well expected to intercept the crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of this week has been suspended because of a tropical disturbance in the Gulf, BP spokeswoman Elizabeth Adams said Tuesday.